Why don't more people allow themselves to enjoy that most prolific theater of the real, the most athletic of the performing arts, Pro Wrestling?
It's a marketing problem. People see both wrestling and "game" as low class and uncultured… At speaking to the baser senses, without any true depth or greater artistic goal. It's the ultimate expression of the American meme: we can't figure out how to have our sex without some violence to balance it out.
In reality, of course, things are always more complicated than that. The guy getting hit over the head with a chair is an actual guy, getting hit with an actual chair, most likely by one of his best friends in the world. He does it 6 days a week for a few reasons, and they aren't all money and a love of fisticuffs. He lives for the roar of the crowd, and the starry-eyed looks at signing events. He's an entertainer, a good one, and underappreciated for that effort, nearly to the point of direct insult.
Similarly, "game players" aren't just in it for phone numbers, or sex. There are even clearer delineations "within the community" – hardcore PUAs, the seemingly-heartless heartbreakers just 'in it to pin it, and on to the next'… There are "Social Artists", who are genuinely interested in the psychology and science of human interaction. That they often use the knowledge gained to their own benefit makes them merely human.
And at the "nobler end" of the equation, there are the many people living just at the outside of the "gamesphere", using all the same tactics and teaching, in slightly tweaked ways – growing peoples self confidence, helping them choose and thrive in a career that fits them best, instructing doctors/lawyers/police/the military in ways to present themselves less as hostile forces in peoples' lives, despite the fact that they usually only show up unannounced when something really bad has happened.
People don't hate on similar self-help gurus Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Seth Godin, or even Oprah the way they hate on Mystery. But in a lot of ways, they're basically the same sensationalistic dude, saying the same thing:
- believe in yourself, and show it
- actually listen to others, without sacrificing yourself
- have a plan, and track your progress
- Less thinking, more doing
Simply put, if more men understood in a rational way what "game" was, and how they could use it to improve their lives, they would. Unfortunately, the truth is so wrapped up in one stereotypically misogynistic, peacocked, and gimmicky subculture, that the teachings get thrown out with the taught.
Efforts to change that trend, thus far, have come off as too serious, or too abstracted from the social/sexual aspects of pickup arts that make them so attractive. The separation, too, puts a wall up between sexual expression and the rest of life. The same people who decry the rise of the PUA are the same ones lamenting the death of flirtation. We need to break down more of these walls, not build them up higher.
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