This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "The Game" by Neil Strauss. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.
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Who was David X the PUA? What was his role in The Game and in the PUA community?
David X was popular and influential in the PUA community. He was known for his confidence and carefree approach to sarging.
Read more about David X and his role in The Game.
David X: The Success of an “Ugly” PUA
David X was a relatively recent PUA discovery. He was a former biker who now worked in construction.
Despite being one of the ugliest PUAs, David X oozed alpha male confidence. His rules for seduction were:
- Don’t care what the woman thinks.
- Remember that you’re more important than the woman.
- Never lie to a woman.
David X the PUA flipped women’s words to corner them into going out with him. For example, he’d lead a woman to say she was spontaneous. Later, if he asked her out and she was hesitant, he’d challenge her about being spontaneous.
David X the PUA was known for dating multiple women—the seduction community called it harem management—without lying to any of the women about it.
Style’s Style: Meeting The Gurus
Mystery had another workshop coming up in two months, in Miami. Style set a goal to meet all the top pickup artists (PUAs) before then.
The seduction community had several pickup gurus, each pedaling a different seduction strategy. For example, Ross Jeffries’s Speed Seduction was based on subliminal messaging through sequences of scripted lines, while David DeAngelo’s Double Your Dating strategy used a hybrid of arrogance and humor, called cocky funny.
The gurus competed for disciples, discrediting each other in the process. However, most men in the seduction community didn’t want to commit to just one guru—like Style, they wanted to pick up as many strategies from as many sources as they could.
Improving His Game
It had only been a month since Style’s pickup education began while attending Mystery’s workshop—and soon he’d be helping Mystery lead a workshop. Style began training rigorously to improve his game in the six weeks before the next workshop.
Style read books on a range of related subjects, including:
- Social dynamics
- Flirting
- Body language
- Sexual technique
- Women’s sexual fantasies
- Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), per Jeffries’ method
- Magic and mind-reading, per Mystery’s method
Based on what he read, Style also:
- Corrected his gestures and posture to make himself appear more confident
- Took singing and speech lessons to make his fast, muffled speech slower and clearer
- Wore bright clothing and flashy accessories for peacocking, including fake piercings, feather boas, and light-up necklaces
Style went out constantly with Grimble, his wing Twotimer, and Jeffries. Style studied their sarging techniques, and he tried to emulate them.
Success Reveals Style’s Inner Doubt
One day, Style nervously approached a woman in Office Depot. Following the prescribed routine, he negged her, showed her an ESP trick, and made up a false time constraint.
Style asked the woman how they could continue their conversation, and, to his surprise, she offered her phone number and email address. PUAs never give their phone numbers and never ask for a woman’s number directly—they must get the woman to offer her number.
The woman had claimed to be a model, so when Style got home, he looked her up online. He discovered that he’d just scored the Playmate of the Year’s phone number.
Although Style was thrilled, he felt unworthy. He’d learned the strategies, but hadn’t yet built the confidence to back them up. He never called.
David X was not a prominent character in The Game, but his pickup technique is worth nothing. Style learned from David X and adopted some of his techniques.
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Here's what you'll find in our full The Game summary :
- The secrets of the Pickup Artist community in seducing women
- How key Pickup Artist leaders fought with each other and split the group apart
- What author Neil Strauss took away about women from his years of training
