 
After some Internet research I’m calling this a 50/50 split. I never heard of Neil Strauss until I came across this piece about his douchebaggery on The Firearm Blog in which Strauss claims to have developed a vampiric bloodlust after supposedly receiving “survival training” that sounds more like a Palo Mayombe ceremony than instruction on how to survive hardship.
From the far too credulous pages of The Boston Globe:
Next he takes a course in killing with a knife, during which an instructor named Mad Dog demands that he slaughter a live goat. Strauss also studies wilderness survival, learning to build a shelter from leaves, find water, and live off the land. After getting instruction in shooting, he finds himself changing from wimpy writer to would-be killer: “Something strange had occurred. I developed a bloodlust I’d never felt before. I actually wanted an excuse to shoot a bad guy.”
Riiiight. It should surprise no one that the man who wrote a book on “the secret society of pick up artists” is given to, shall we say, embellishments.
I applaud anyone who can make a living convincing people there is some sort of sexual Illuminati whose secrets can change the lives of all the awkward and shy beta males out there when in fact the only secret to getting laid is going to bar and hitting on someone. But in his new book about survivalism, called Emergency, which he’s pimping in this article, his overactive fantasy life is not just borderline slander on the survivalist community, but guaranteed to get you killed if you take his “lessons” to heart.
But this isn’t a review of his book, it’s an analysis of his character, or lack thereof. Reading through the Globe piece it is painfully obvious to anyone who has ever left the confines of Manhattan that Strauss is lying his hipster ass off. There is no reputable knife fighting program that demands you slaughter goats and outside of the imaginations of of “writers” who have had their creativity sucked out and spit into the gutter by University writing programs there are no goat hating knife fighting gurus named “Mad Dog.” Strauss can’t even be said to have invented these sad fabrications because they are basically cliched images of survivalists that urban liberals have passed around for years.
What’s more incredulous is the idea that after picking up a gun and receiving what I guess is some hunting instruction so he can “live off the land” he immediately wants to kill people. This is probably a nice pick-up line at a PETA convention, but the reality is that it simply doesn’t happen to hunters. While many people enjoy hunting (or fishing), all will tell you that they DON’T enjoy the actual killing of an animal. As a child I fished with my grandparents and we ate almost every fish we caught, and we enjoyed the process of fishing, but the killing and cleaning of fish is not particularly enjoyable. Hunting is the same.
Hunting and fishing, from my perspective, re-immerses Man into nature, which modern urban society separates us from. It reinvests us in the natural world, and helps us remember the primal reality of life on Earth. Most hunters brag of how cleanly and humanely they take game, few brag of the death itself. They revel in the skill that allowed them to kill the animal, not the killing itself. Strauss’ reaction to learning to hunt, to just holding a gun, is not normal and not indicative of the experience mature adults have when they are learning to shoot. It is the reaction of the unstable man-child, the 40-year-old adolescent who seeks to take revenge on the world for slights from his childhood. Strauss describes his experience with learning to handle firearms and “live off the land” like it’s a review of a new first person shooter, which if we were to believe the veracity of his story at all (which I don’t) would say more about him than survival.
Read the whole thing and there will be no way to avoid questioning his credibility as the anecdotes get progressively more ham fisted. Like this gem in which he was told a good urban survival strategy would be dressing like a woman. You know, because women have it so easy in urban environments:
In perhaps the clearest moment of transformation in “Emergency,” Strauss dresses as a woman during an exercise in urban survival. As he’s putting on his disguise in a men’s bathroom, two aggressive civilians show up. Fearing they’re about to attack him, Strauss angrily rips off his hat and wig, informs the men he’s a Marine taking part in a drill, and warns them to back off. They do. “I’d learned my lesson,” Strauss writes: “cross-dressing is not an urban survival tactic. It’s an urban suicide tactic.”
It’s like a Friends episode written by a man who was overcompensating. Neil Strauss is the last person who should be taken seriously as an authority on the survival subculture, unless you need to sell books to urban liberals who are too naive to see through his newest pick up line. Skip the book and buy Patriots by Jim Rawles who runs the must read Survival Blog if you’re looking for survival related reading. Books on foraging and trapping (both much more efficient than hunting) are also good, but the best way to learn how to survive is practice surviving not reading books.
Or apparently writing them.
I thought the same when I first read his book but you can actually track these people down and speak with them yourself like I did. All of which are highly respected in the survival community. I like the little book plug at the end like you don’t have some kind of agenda. Google ads anybody?
Actually most people can’t “track them down” because we work all day ut that’s an aside. As for my “agenda” of making money on the blogs I write for a living you caught me, I run ads on my sites. Ergo no one can trust what I say because I’m not living off my parents while squawking.
I’ve been to a range many times, I’ve seen many new shooters. If you develop a “bloodlust” after shooting a gun once or twice you’re clearly unstable, or is your point that it is normal for a grown man to react to something so mundane as firing a gun like a 10-year-old raised on HALO?
I think perhaps you should follow your own advice and “READ THE WHOLE THING” (Capitals added for emphasis…emphasizing you’re an ignorant slacker whom has never read the books)
A few quick clarifications:
A) You wrote: “”Read the whole thing and there will be no way to avoid questioning his credibility as the anecdotes get progressively more ham fisted. Like this gem in which he was told a good urban survival strategy would be dressing like a woman. You know, because women have it so easy in urban environments.””
The problem with your statement here is that it is completely FALSE! Following your statement, you then proceeded to quote not the book, but some other slack-job review which got the facts wrong. The truth is, Strauss came up with the idea of cross-dressing ON HIS OWN. His advisers had actually told him how to be inconspicuous as a MALE, however, since he was undergoing a test which required him to evade those same advisers, he cleverly decided to dress up as a women…the tactic worked. Read page 323 if you’re doubtful… that’s page 323 of THE ACTUAL BOOK, not whatever secondary, lazy, poorly understood source you’ve been quoting from. READ THE BOOK
B Part 1) You then combine two mutually exclusive parts of the book into one paragraph (your fifth) which misleads anyone moronic enough to read your blog, into thinking that Strauss immediately goes from gun school to killing a goat out of bloodlust. Once again: WRONG!
Strauss learns to use a pistol…enjoys it, and suddenly feels empowered with this new skill claiming that the ability to wield a weapon actually made him experience the desire to use it. Similar motivations occur when you put a hammer in someones hands (they want to pound nails with it) or if you put a football in someones hands, they want to toss it. Every human being has a innate propensity to use tools at their disposal for the tools intended purpose. If you put a gun in someone’s hand, and train them on how to operate it effectively, they’ll likely want to shoot it…effectively. And that entire sidenote which you’ve used as a prime example to denigrate this book, was no more than a three sentence prelude to Strauss’s actual point of the chapter: That indoctrinating youth into the military is effective BECAUSE of this empowering feeling and BECAUSE a weapon is put in their hands and BECAUSE labeling animate objects as “Bad Guys” actually dehumanizes them effectively enough to turn an average 20 year old into a murderer. Read an Intro Psych Text book and get back to me…but don’t just find a review online or read a paragraph or two and then consider yourself a shrink…
READ THE BOOK
B Part 2) Neil didn’t want to kill the goat. Didn’t enjoy it. Described it as traumatizing. Swore he would utilize every piece of the goat he could and even wished to name his first born child after the goat, all in an attempt to atone for what he felt was a sin. Also, the killing of this goat occurs on page 286 of 418…Strauss references it several times throughout the remainder of the book claiming it was not enjoyable, and even on one occasion suggesting the possibility of raising a goat for every reason except slaughter. Your argument that Strauss enjoyed the killing of the goat is fallacious.
READ THE BOOK
C) In short, The Game is not a book about an actual organized secret society as much as it is about an enormous and growing collection of men who share successful dating and introduction tactics online via blogs and online forums, and then chronicles a select few of these men who turn the whole shebang into a lucrative business. So your sarcastic statement:
I applaud anyone who can make a living convincing people there is some sort of sexual Illuminati whose secrets can change the lives of all the awkward and shy beta males out there when in fact the only secret to getting laid is going to bar and hitting on someone.
…is essentially misinformed, misleading, misguided and a whole other whack of words that begin with the prefix “mis”. It’s fairly suiting seeing as you’ve seemed to completely MISS (again, remember what those capitals are for) the point. The methods that Strauss undertakes are 100% all about going to that bar and hitting on someone, however anyone with the slightest bit of intellect (or experience with women excluding webcams) would be able to recognize that there are ways to approach a woman that work, and ways that don’t. Strauss’s book illuminates the dichotomy between successful and failing approaches, based on the collective knowledge all the other bloggers out there. Perhaps he embellishes his narrative slightly, but isn’t it the job of the writer to entertain and intrigue as best he can through his writing? I mean, perhaps you said it best right above claiming that you “write for a living”…well …So does Strauss, deal with it. He’s going to make his life sound as exciting as he possibly can, don’t be upset if his literary talent exceeds your capacity to trust his anecdotes…that being said, chances are, if you try to summarize several years of your life into a few hundred pages of text, you damn well better have something exciting enough to be worth reading, otherwise, you’re living one hell of a sad life.
Strauss simply manages to articulate and elaborate better than most and if that requires a little bit of exaggeration or editing then so be it, welcome to writing! Nobody wants to read about mundane monotony surrounding the daily life of a nobody. Strauss knows that, and eliminates any details that would associate his biographical persona with a lame everyman. Maybe he exaggerates a bit to liven up his narrative, maybe he embellishes, fabricates, distorts and completely lies. HOWEVER, YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RANK TO ACCUSE HIM OF SUCH seeing as you haven’t even attempted the slightest bit of fact checking to support a single word of your argument. As a matter of fact, You have embellished, fabricated, distorted and lied repetitively throughout your entire post. Perhaps you should perform an analysis of your own character or lack thereof before mistakenly projecting your inadequacies onto others.
“We make fun of those we’re most scared of becoming”
-Neil Strauss, Emergency
What are you gay for Strauss? Look, you men’s movement “game” sissy types can try to make it out like they’re some sort of science to getting laid that the Prometheus Strauss stole from the gods to give to mortals but the reality is his success with women is easy to explain:
1) Suckers give him money
2) He uses that money to pick up gold digging whores.
3) He tells you that it was really his “strategy” that he can teach you.
Only a moron would think he needs a book to pick up women in an age where 80% of women under 25 think giving out a blowjob isn’t sex. Anyone can get laid in America Evan, with or without the mighty Neil Strauss.
I don’t know what my “rank” is but that’s because I’m not a groupie for some dude who spends his free time playing World of Warcraft. I do think it’s funny that you think I’m sad (my 20 year relationship makes me sad, my ability to spot a mark makes me sad etc) but no quite so sad that you can’t vomit out this opus which is based solely on your latent homosexual desire to please some celebrity. By funny, I MEAN SAD.
BY THE WAY I TOO AM NOW TYPING IN ALL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS. THANK YOU FOR POINTING IT OUT IN YOUR POST ABOVE.
Now I could give a shit what some guy jerking off to Neil Strauss says, but that asinine quote you put at the end intrigues me. You actually think that is wise but it literally means that people who make fun of Jihadists are afraid they’re going to convert to Islam and blow themselves up. By your previous argument the quote implies I’m afraid I’m going to run a con game on suckers and use the money to bang drunk college coeds and escorts. Terrifying to be sure! But surely even someone as retarded as you must see that this pablum doesn’t stand up to scrutiny?
Rob,
Sounds like you are very upset about something. Could it be possible that you have never been laid and are upset that you don’t understand the science behind social dynamics. Next you’ll tell us that there is no such thing as gravity. Just because you don’t know how it works doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If it didn’t work people wouldn’t be doing it. And you say that only morons would think he needs to read a book to get laid… I’m guessing you don’t think people need to read books to write books or become a electrician or the president… You think that if you want to become better at something you just need to magically become better at it without studying or practice. I guess thats why you write articles about reviews that have already been written by someone else.
Good Luck Champ,
P.S.- When you come home and find your GF in bed with someone who read a book on how to seduce women and become a better person just remember, so can you…
Yes “Dr” you caught me, after being with my old lady 20 years and growing up in the 1970s and 80s I never had sex.
Are you retarded? You think you need a book to get laid? You think hooking up with chicks is a science? Let me save you some money champ:
1) All chicks in bars will nail you if you’re not fat, goofy or creepy. That’s why there tin the bar.
2) Unless your physically repellent or come off as a serial killer there’s at least three women at your job who will blow you.
3) Ditto for the chicks in your neighborhood.
You can’t read clearly so I’m not sure why you’re invested in Neil Strauss. Maybe your gay for him, maybe you are him or maybe you’re just a troll who is reading blogs at 3:30am after a long lonely Saturday night where you clearly didn’t get laid. I state right in there that this isn’t a book review, it’s an essay about character, or really lack of it.
If you’re not Strauss himself you’re a mark. A sucker. Women don’t care about your pick up line, they know if they’re going to have sex with you as soon as they meet you. If you got of the web, stopped smoking pot and playing Xbox and lived in the real world (or IRL so you know what I’m talking about) you’d learn, through experience, how to pick up women. All men do. Then if you’re not a loser you’ll settle down with an old lady who will be there for you the rest of your life..
Instead you’re living a fantasy by a dochebag whose stories, if you had “any bark on ya'” as they say just don’t hold up.
Also, we were talking about survivalist here. You should probably re-read the post. You know what doesn’t stop two “aggressive civilians” from kicking the ass of a skinny bald douche? Yelling “I’m a marine” while ripping off the tranny outfit you were wearing.
But good luck surviving an emergency following his advice. Chump.
@Rob Taylor.
That fact that you’re in a 20 year relationship just proves that you don’t know anything about modern romantic/social dynamics.
Also, writing shit like ”1) All chicks in bars will nail you if you’re not fat, goofy or creepy. That’s why there tin the bar.” discredits your already poor knowledge of venusian arts.
The fact that you say something gay like “Venusian arts” (and please note it should be capitalized) should tell you all you need to know. Modern “romanitc/social dynamics” are the same as ever, trust me “Breezy” I’ve been going to bars since I started high school in NYC.
People get drunk because they’re miserable. Miserable people will do anything to fill that sucking void in their soul, including pretend your stupid come ons got them into bed as opposed to they’re desire to not be alone.
You’re sad dude. You “pick up” douches are worse than those “men’s movement” sissies. What? You think you invented picking up chicks? How the fuck do you think your mother got t6he lad up her that became you homie?
Stop watching Star Wars, hit the gym and get a job, then I personally guarantee you that women will throw themselves at you.
But again, you did see this article is about survivalism not your inability to socialize without some sort of comic book persona?
Rob,
I don’t know all about this pick up stuff, survival books, etc… I just have to quote this…
“People get drunk because they’re miserable”
Interesting, I don’t know about you but I’ve been drunk many times and not miserable. Sometimes people have a few drinks during a game, holidays, etc.
I enjoyed your article as you’re entitled to your opinion. I applaud Neil for doing what he enjoys in life which is writing. Whether or not his books ring true are a different story and is entirely up to the reader to decide that. You take it as fiction others as fact.
After reading a summarization of his books I would like to add my opinion. You’re probably correct many girls will go home with dudes. The whole game plan is being the most attractive to her mentally, and physically. Who ever stands out to her the most is the winner. Thats my take on it.