Hello again my Beautiful Watchers and welcome
to part two of my review of The Mystery Method
by Erik Von Markovik aka Mystery.
If you missed part one there's the thing.
I have it on good authority that the very
beginning is a very good place to start.
So as I said last time, Mystery had a lot
to say on the subject of “value” and the
manipulation of to get laid. New let's talk
about his other glorious pieces of advice:
Structuring your night regarding time, location
and uh… overcoming resistance.
Due to that last part I’m afraid I must
yet again include yet another trigger warning
for upcoming discussions of sexual assault.
At the very start of the book Mystery makes
the rather suspicious claim that if you follow
his advice you will definitely get any woman
you want into bed within 7 hours.
He later qualifies this by mentioning that
these might not be 7 sequential hours and
then later still contradicts it completely
by saying that the Mystery Method can take
anywhere between 4 to 10 hours to perform
properly.
He also claims that there are three important
time segments to the method. Again he contradicts
himself later by describing several more but
for the sake of it let’s pretend like this
isn’t the meandering incoherent ravings
of an emotionally damaged entitled douchebag
and I will once again attempt to break it
down for you.
By the way if anyone else has suffered through
this book and thinks I might be misrepresenting
any part of it feel free to let me know in
the comments, I am trying my best to relay
the information in it in an honest fashion
but it is fucking hard to present Mystery’s
advice in a cohesive format because he sure
as fuck didn’t.
The three main segments you need to allocate
your time to when picking up women are Attraction,
Comfort and Seduction.
Attraction we’ve mostly covered. That’s
where you adjust everyone's “value” until
she supposedly wants you.
The building comfort section is a misleading
title. You’d think it would be about trying
to make the target of your affections comfortable
with you or finding out where her comfort
level is… However, and there is no easy
way to say this but Mystery advocates for
using the comfort timeslot for training your
target like a dog until she stops resisting
you touching her.
I wish that I were exaggerating to make him
look bad but he makes the comparison to dog
training so many times.
What you need to do is keep track of her behaviour
and subtly reward her when she is “compliant”
and punish her when she does anything that
you deem to be bad behaviour like sassing
you back or snubbing your advances.
Rewards take the form of compliments and affectionate
gestures, punishments involve “freezing
her out” and acting super cold to her for
a time to show her she fucked up.
Mystery mentions that just like with animal
training, it is essential not to reward bad
behavior or punish good behaviour.
Every now and again you’ll need to test
her to see how compliant she’s become.
You’ll need to keep this up until you’ve
sensed that she’s reached her “compliance
threshold.” Different women will have different
levels that you can break them down to but
sex will definitely occure before you reach
any given woman’s limit.
Mystery’s suggestions for compliance tests
include taking her hand, asking her to stand
up, seeing if she’ll follow you outside
to the smoking area or putting her hand on
your cock to see if she takes it away HOLY
SHIT that just slid right into sexual assault
didn’t it?
Doing this up long term will result in your
target subconsciously realising that she has
more fun when she complies with you. Her indoctrination
will be complete.
Sex will apparently occure at 60% compliance.
Mystery tantalizes his reader by saying he
won't reveal what happens at 100% in this
book so presumably you have to by his DVD
or go to his website or something. I genuinely
hate this man. I just loath everything about
him.
Seduction as the name implies is when you
finally isolate your target from her group
and attempt to have sex with her. It is at
this point that Mystery warns you that you
have to be most aware of… The Slut Defense.
Final warning: this is the point of the book
where Mystery stops dancing along the line
between perseverance and sexual assault and
pirouettes right over the fucking thing.
Because once again apparently women are terrible.
The word slut and its meaning is something
they have created to call each other partly
because they are just terrible people and
partly to try to stop anyone but them from
getting the best choice of mate.
You have to work around women being hyper
aware of the potential judgment of their friends,
and their constant fear of being branded a
slut.
This is why it's important to lie to her about
why she should come back to your place so
she can give herself plausible deniability
about if she knew you were going to hook up.
Indeed. Deceiving women and luring them to
your home under false pretenses is doing them
a great favour by helping them circumvent
the silly slut shaming that women exclusively
do to each other.
The slut defense also causes women to feel
like they have to show “token resistance”
throughout the night and may even become an
impassable roadblock if you try to rush things,
that’s why section two, building comfort
is so important.
Mystery is adamant that showing token resistance
does not represent an unwillingness to sleep
with you and that it’s important not to
allow such things to impede your plans to
fuck your target.
To make things even more rapey, he also warns
you that fear of being branded a slut will
sometimes cause “last minute resistance”
where a woman says that you should stop just
as sex is about to be initiated.
His advice in this circumstance is to verbally
agree with her that you should stop but under
no circumstances to actually stop because
as explained, her attempt to withdraw consent
at this point is simply due to fear of female
judgment and couldn’t possibly be a sign
that she does not actually wish to have sex
with you.
So yeah, Mystery advocates for rape. I personally
don't see any other conclusion that can be
drawn at this point.
Even the part about ignoring token reistance
is fucking horrifying since the #MeToo era
attempted to make men more aware of the fact
that women will sometimes go along with sex
simply because they fear the very real threat
of a violent reaction from men faced with
rejection or many many other types of underserved
backlash.
It should by rights be the responsibility
of someone attempting seduction to be as perceptive
as possible to any signals that that their
enthusiasm might not be reciprocated and it
is truly horrifying to read the words of someone
trying to justify doing the exact opposite.
The only type of resistance that Mystery says
you should heed is an overwhelmingly hostile
rejection of your advances immediately after
your opener. Something along the lines of
screaming at you to fuck off or get lost.
Mystery benevolently tells you not to take
this personally as it’s almost certainly
the result of the target simply having had
a really bad day and couldn’t possibly have
anything to do with creepos like him having
made their lives a living hell or an indication
that you need to reevaluate your behaviour.
Oh no. It's fine.
Mystery warns his readers that it is essential
that the Attract, Build Comfort and Seduction
segments be done in the correct order.
Starting with Seduction will result in rejection
due to the girl raising her slut defense shields
and attempting to build comfort immediately
and being too nice to her too soon can result
in being put in the dredded friendship zone.
He always writes it that way: the friendship
zone. He abbreviates pretty much every other
bloody thing in this book but the friendship
zone is always said in its entirety as if
that will make it sound like less of an incredibly
outdated and toxic thing to believe exists.
Mystery refers to the performances he puts
on to get women to talk to him as “sets,”
presumably using terminology he learned as
a magician to make it less surprising when
his advice involves equal amounts of deception
and misdirection as stage magic.
Mystery drones on and on about sets and approaches
for at least a third of the book but I will
try to summarize the whole charade as best
I can.
When you see someone you’re attracted to,
you have to approach them within 3 seconds.
This is Mystery’s famous three second rule
which I think believe featured quite heavily
in his TV show judging by the trailers for
it.
It’s intended to help you overcome the paralyzing
fear of approaching women, something that
Mystery assures the reader is so strong because
it's another one of those instincts left over
from prehistoric times where attempting to
copulate with the wrong woman could result
in getting murdered by her husband and his
friends or failing to seal the deal could
be so humiliating it would get you banished
from your community to die alone in the wilderness.
Sure fam, I’m certain that's exactly right
and has NOTHING to do with fragile male egos.
Thank you for clearing that up.
The three second rule is also yet another
thing that ties into your value as showing
no hesitation before butting into other people’s
conversations is supposedly something that
women find very attractive.
He also makes a note that there are some exceptions
to the three second rule, for example if you
see a waiter is coming over to your target’s
table and know you’ll be interrupted during
your introduction.
In these cases he suggests watching your targets
until an opportunity arises to make your approach
sooo… Yay stalking is involved now.
Once you’re at your target’s table or
crowd you need to start by asking a seemingly
completely offhand question, then if you’re
not met with immediate overwhelming hostility
make another slightly more personal one.
You need to then follow it up with a story
so interesting that once it’s done they
will be keen for you to stay so they can continue
to have oodles of fun with you.
Maintaining his habit of using performance
terminology, Mystery refers to this as ”your
opener”.
I would actually like to share with you an
example story that Mystery provides for you
to use to capture the minds and imaginations
of your audience so thoroughly they will be
begging you to hang out with them the entire
night. Ahem.
“Oh my God. Did you guys see the girl fight
outside?”
Uh, he makes a note here to cut the women
you’re talking to off before they can respond.
“They were fighting over this guy. I talked
to him afterwards. His name was Glen. That's
a deal-breaker name. Glen.”
“So they were pulling each other's hair
and one of the girls' boobs pops out. Normally
I'm all for seeing a ripe one, but this was
a ‘saggy-baggy booby’... you know, from
National Geographic.”
At this point he recommends moving right onto
your next talking point, again avoiding giving
your audience a chance to respond.
A "saggy-baggy booby". Truly Mystery is a
wordsmith. A bard on the level of Shakespeare
himself.
He does follow it up with an admission that
telling a story like this probably seems counter
productive towards getting you laid which
has got to be one of the biggest well no shit
Sherlock moments of the 21st century.
Repeatedly mentioning that you have a time
constraint is key to the early stages of a
set. You have to make the women you’re sleazing
on think that you have an important thing
to do somewhere else and are constantly on
the verge of leaving.
It’s also essential to do everything you
can at first to convince your target that
you have no interest in sleeping with them
to keep their slut defense shields down for
as long as possible and to make them subconsciously
want to seek to remedy this failure of yours
to apprecate their sex appeal.
Once you feel like you’re a permanent feature
of their group you can start the boasting
and negging process on your target, making
full use of her friends, uh sorry the “obstacles”
and “pawns” to help with this.
It’s a wise move to lock your target in
at this point i.e. take steps to make sure
she can’t just walk away from you and your
negging.
Mystery suggests giving her your hat to wear
or having her hold your drink for you, something
that she has to return to you before she can
escape, therefore tethering her to you in
a small way.
This will allow you to be as much of a dick
to her as you like and gives you the option
of wandering off to find a pawn to use in
your set without fear that your real target
will disappear.
Once your value has been established and your
targets sufficiently lowered, you can start
attempting to isolate her from her group and
start touching her in increasingly intimate
ways to gauge her reactions. Remember to punish
her for resisting by acting like she did something
wrong and reward her for compliance.
You should endeavor to change locations at
least twice over the 7 hours you’ll be attempting
to control your target.
The advantage of the first change is you will
no longer be in the location where you met,
you’ll be in a place you went to “together”
creating a sense of shared camaraderie you
can exploit.
The second change will be when you suggest
going back to your place to see your tank
of tropical fish or listen to a cool record
or whatever lie you choose that gives her
the excuse to go home with you without feeling
slutty.
Finally, overcome all attempts at token resistance
by acknowledging them but also completely
ignoring them. Sex with your dream girl achieved.
To summarize: approach strangers uninvited,
ask them multiple questions, insist on telling
them a creepy story, insult your target until
she feels bad about herself then pretend to
be nice to her while actually training her
using emotional gaslighting to be subservient
to you, isolate her from her friends by changing
venues, talk her into coming to a sex location
of your choice by lying to her, ignore any
resistance or withdrawal of consent and fully
expect to get a fake phone number afterwards.
Ladies and Gentlemen: The Mystery Method.
You know what? I think it's been too long
since you guys have felt my pain so I’m
going to pass on yet more of Mystery’s best
advice. Ahem:
Memorize entire sets with openers, chat up
lines, negs, and compliments and play them
out word for word. After all, women are all
basically the same when you get right down
to it.
Avoid the friendship zone like it’s a disease.
That one’s actually a direct quote.
If you do find yourself in the dreaded friendship
zone, completely cut your friend out of your
life for a bit until you can afford a nicer
car or a bigger apartment. THEN reacquaint
yourself with your target and use your higher
value to make her see you in a potentially
more romantic light.
Remember that there is nothing wrong with
manipulating a female friend into sex. Even
if they don’t know it, they will always
be much happier with a sexual partner instead
of a platonic friend.
Smile at first to build trust but ease off
later to avoid seeming too keen. Women don’t
like men who smile too much.
Don’t think of guys as competition, think
of them as ugly women.
Turn your back on her just before going in
for a kiss, it will make her more likely to
accept it. Uh, I’m not sure how that’s
supposed to work physically, but try anyway!
Don’t show too much enthusiasm or women
will accuse you of being gay.
If you’re walking somewhere with your target
randomly speed up or slow down to make them
match your pace. It’s a pretty obvious power
play, but their tiny woman brains won’t
be able to pick up on it.
Try to keep perfectly still when you’re
hitting on women. It makes you look confident...or
like a possum.
Establish dominance by saying things like
“Your social skills have bought you three
more minutes of my time. Good for you.”
Make her accustomed to your touch by spinning
her around in a little dance or teaching her
a jive handshake.
Practice your manipulation on men. If you
can do it to them, you can definitely do it
to lesser beings like women.
Actually returning to you when she says she’s
going off to the bathroom is a sign that she
likes you. I’m not kidding, he really said
that!
Grab her hands and hold them to see if she
holds back. Uh, you know, I’m actually going
to go out on a limb on this one and say that
I am 100% certain that no good seduction advice
has ever included the words “grab her”
in any context.
If there's any room in your body for anything
beyond disgust at this point you might be
wondering if this book is at least well written.
Is it a good book even if it’s really bad
advice? And the answer is an overwhelming
NO. No it most certainly is not.
The first issue is Mystery clearly does not
have enough material for a full book. He has
a dissertation at most that he tries to stretch
out to long enough to justify sticking a cover
on it and selling it as a book.
He does this in various ways. To start with
the foreword by Neil Strouss is ridiculously
long. It starts with a very creepy story about
him and Mystery going out for sushi and deciding
to sleaze on some young women because they
happened to get a waft of their perfume and
were overcome with lust, then he follows this
up with several pages of kissing Mystery’s
ass. Sentiments that we now know he later
came to deeply regret.
Once Mystery takes over he still avoids getting
to anything resembling a point for at least
another chapter.
He starts by droning on about how cool Casanova
was for banging so many attractive, sophisticated
women and then explains that all men should
aspire to be like that.
Amusingly though, even while describing his
historical inspiration Mystery is so insecure
he cannot resist mentioning that he’s actually
superior because he’s already surpassed
Casanova’s 122 confirmed conquests.
He then plugs his website for a bit, always
a slightly foolish thing to do considering
the books tend to outlive domains, then he
goes on to talk about how great his method
is, and how he developed it through decades
of trial and error but anyone can now learn
it from him and how he pretty much guarantees
you success if you follow it.
It went on for long enough for me to genuinely
wonder if I was ever going to actually hear
about how he suggests picking up women or
if he was just going to sing his own praises
for the entire book. It turned out to be both.
He also repeats the same information over
and over again by including completely unnecessary
extensive keypoint summaries at the end of
every chapter and by just re-explaining the
same thing in a slightly different way and
trying to pass it off as a new piece of advice.
Additionally he provides a ridiculous amount
of examples and suggestions for negs, actual
compliments, opening questions and conversation
controlling stories to tell. Like so many
more than is necessary until it is embarrassingly
clear that he’s just desperate to stretch
out the word count.
And finally he includes a huge amount of pretty
much unintelligible Microsoft paint illustrations
of his tactics.
My next major issue with the writing is pretty
fucking simple. I am SO dyslexic that I almost
didn’t make it through the British equivalent
of high school. If even I can see that your
book is riddled with random capitalizations
and basic spelling, grammatical and punctuation
errors then that is a sign that you have fucked
up with a capital TH.
Mystery LOVES abbreviating things and coming
up with cool names for his chat ups like the
Fool's Mate Gambit.
If you were to randomly open this book in
the middle you might be a tad confused as
to why you’re supposed to TLD and IOD but
never DHV and remember to keep up the IOIs
or you might end up needing to F-U-C-K-O-F-F.
In one of the last chapters, like right at
the end of the book, he adds a new buzzword
to the repertoire: “bouncing”.
He uses it to mean switching locations deriving
its name from someone saying “Hey, let's
bounce.” The obvious problem with this being
bouncing already means something: it's when
hired security aka bouncers throws someone
out of a venue.
Ok let's end this the same way I ended my
Fifty Shades reviews and do some with some
quickfire complaints and observations.
Throughout Mystery continually insists that
he makes his targets happy. In the intro Strouss
even implies a certain selflessness in their
actions because they bring joy and laughter
to people.
Despite not having a word to say about anything
beyond the second you get your target into
bed, Mystery claims that his advice can be
used to develop long lasting relationships
as well as one night stands but obviously
I don’t believe a word of that.
Mainly because not ONCE does he ever mention
ANYTHING about compatibility with the women
you meet. Quite the opposite, the entire point
of the mystery method is designed to get literally
anyone to sleep with you regardless of who
the fuck they are.
I think the only reason he wants you to believe
that his advice can lead to something long
term is so he can keep reminding you that
if you don’t learn to pick up women you
might not pass on your genes to the next generation
and he can scare you with the thought of cosmic
irrelevance.
It's almost fascinating to observe when Mystery
takes the time to justify his awfulness, usually
by claiming it’s a survival instinct, and
when he doesn't seem aware at all about how
disgusting he’s being.
Can you imagine what it must be like to be
the supposedly hundreds of people who fell
for Mystery’s tricks and now have to see
him publicly flaunting his manipulation tactics
and being revered for them?
If there’s a guaranteed way of developing
trust issues that has got to be it.
Even though it’s not specifically recommended
as a seduction technique, Mystery continuously
recommends asking your targets if they can
cook as part of the flirtation examples he
provides. There's not really much to say about
that aside from acknowledging it’s embarrassingly
outdated and kind of sad really.
On the last few pages Mystery suggests that
the confidence you learn from picking up women
can be applied to the rest of your life. You
can negotiate a business deal or wow someone
at a job interview. You will in fact become
generally a superior being and all it costs
you is your human decently.
The book ends how it began. With Mystery trying
to get you to buy more of his stuff.
Mystery is very confident that he knows a
lot about women. How they work and how they’ll
react to things. It should go without saying
that I personally think he’s deluded.
If any of his advice works for him it is not
for the reasons he says it does. He’s just
a persistent pushy man who takes advantage
of the current imbalances in gender power
to strong arm women into sex.
And of course as mentioned he very rarely
refers to women as such being much more inclined
to call them: Targets, Obstacles, pawns, hackable
biological computers and dogs to be trained.
He seems to consider women an awful lot of
things though human beings is certainly not
on the list.
I very much doubt anyone watching right now
needs to be told not to attempt the Mystery
Method. I’d like to think I’ve cultivated
an audience of Beautiful Watchers and not
creepos and I’m pretty sure anyone who randomly
came across this video who might need to hear
this advice would have rage quit when I gave
that trigger warning at the start.
So instead I guess I’ll just say be careful
out there people. We’re living in a world
full of Mysterys.
Thank you for joining me on this rather stressful
journey my Beautiful Watchers. If you enjoyed
this review or just like seeing me suffer
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