Who Is Mystery in The Game? Styles’ PUA Mentor

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Who is Mystery in The Game? What is his PUA method and what is his relationship with Neil Strauss, aka Style?

Mystery in The Game is one of the pickup artists Neil Strauss follows and writes about in his book chronicling his time in the pickup artist community. Mystery in The Game is one of the top PUAs, and his methods influence Strauss and his lifestyle.

Mystery in The Game: The Mystery Method

From an early age, Mystery in The Game had wanted to be a famous magician. He spent his teenage years honing his craft, but, when he turned 21 and was still a virgin, he realized that his obsessive focus on magic had kept him from meeting women.

Mystery didn’t know that the seduction community existed, so he conducted his own research. He studied women and their reactions when he tried to hit on them. Over 10 years, Mystery pieced together the principles of social interaction and the patterns of male-female dynamics.

Mystery developed techniques that incorporated magic with the lessons he’d learned. His strategy—which he dubbed the Mystery Method—broke down into these steps: 

  1. Walk into the club with a smile. A smile indicates that you’re confident, fun, and, above all, an alpha male. 
  2. Select a target (a woman you want to seduce) in a group. Don’t pick up women who are standing alone. 
  3. Follow the three-second rule: When you see a woman you’re interested in, approach her within three seconds. If you wait longer, you risk either overthinking it or staring at her too long and looking like a creep. 
  4. Approach the group confidently and start conversation with a scripted pickup line, such as, “It looks like the party’s over here” or “Did you see those two girls fighting outside?” The lines are simple; they’re just meant to get people talking. 
  5. Ignore your target. Instead, make her friends like you—especially anyone who would be likely to try to interfere with your pickup attempt (such as male friends). Winning over the group makes you seem like the life of the party, while ignoring your target makes her more eager for your attention. 
  6. Further provoke your target with a neg, which is a backhanded compliment or vague insult—for example, offer her gum after she talks, or tell her that her hair would look better if it were up/down. The neg reinforces your lack of interest and further injures the woman’s self-esteem.
  7. Isolate your target. Use an excuse to get her away from the group, such as saying that you want to show her something. 
  8. Look for indicators of interest (IOIs). For example, if she asks you a question about yourself, or if you squeeze her hands and she squeezes back. 
  9. Demonstrate an interesting skill, like a magic trick or an ESP test, to impress and intrigue her. 
  10. Once you get three IOIs, try to get her to kiss you by saying, “Would you like to kiss me?” This question is fool-proof: If she says, “yes,” you get a kiss (PUAs call this a kiss-close). If she says, “maybe,” you can say, “let’s find out,” and go in for a kiss. If she says, “no,” then you can deflect and say that you weren’t asking for one. 
  11. Keep her wanting more. Create a false time constraint and say that you have to leave, but that you’d like to continue this another time. At this point, she should give you her number (PUAs call this a number-close). 

Mystery the PUA’s whole strategy was designed to pick up women subtly. Rather than coming on directly and forcefully, Mystery instructed men to take their time and build the anticipation so that the woman would want to be hit on.

Mystery’s Theories, Tricks, and Principles

Mystery in The Game had developed countless theories and principles that dictated his tactics while sarging in the field (while hitting on women). The strategies were all meant to make the PUA seem like the most interesting person in the room, while simultaneously appearing disinterested in the woman he was hitting on, so that she would essentially pursue him. 

The primary rule of the game was that PUAs don’t do what everyone else does. For example, if every man in the club was gawking at a particularly beautiful woman, the PUA practically ignored her. When the PUA did approach the woman, he never acknowledged her beauty—he may have even subtly downplayed it. The effect was that the PUA stood out among the crowd. 

Who Is Mystery in The Game? Styles’ PUA Mentor

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  • 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

Carrie Cabral

Carrie has been reading and writing for as long as she can remember, and has always been open to reading anything put in front of her. She wrote her first short story at the age of six, about a lost dog who meets animal friends on his journey home. Surprisingly, it was never picked up by any major publishers, but did spark her passion for books. Carrie worked in book publishing for several years before getting an MFA in Creative Writing. She especially loves literary fiction, historical fiction, and social, cultural, and historical nonfiction that gets into the weeds of daily life.

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