RAZOR, JULY/AUGUST, 2005
By Anna David
The concept of men showing other men how to pick up women isn’t entirely new. Not only was there Ross Jeffries’ 1992 book How to Get the Women You Desire Into Bed (which emphasized conscious manipulation), but you men have been casually coaching your buddies on how to acquire would-be conquests (in exchange for wingman credit) for years. Yet Hitch fever seems to be sweeping the nation of late, with a variety of pickup gurus claiming they can teach men how to make us limp with list — for a small fee.
It all seems to have shifted up a few gears several years ago when an inordinately tall Canadian named Erik von Merkovik (nom de plume: Mystery) began gaining online attention for developing things like “the neg theory,” which essentially says that the best way for a man to get a hot woman interested is to lob her a qualifier that’s designed to both compliment and subtly one-up her (e.g., “Nice nails – are they real?”). Since then, companies like Double Your Dating, Real Social Dynamics and Pick Up 101 have popped up everywhere, and while we ladies sat home watching Sex and the City, many of you were learning how to make us want to have sex in your city.
Like most women who’d gotten wind of this, I was distinctly unimpressed. The last thing our society needed, I thought, was more men abandoning actual intimate relationships for casual one-night affairs. Besides, I can basically recall only one time when I was actually seduced – that is, where I succumbed to a guy’s advances based almost entirely on his efforts to woo me. See, addicted as I am to my alpha-female role – I tend to decide whom I want and then engage in mutual, verbal and physical flirting – I essentially believed that the mating dance happened naturally, and not by following a set of rules complete with its own glossary (see sidebar).
I was also highly skeptical of the fact that seduction was something that could be taught at all, and quite convinced that men trying to do so were essentially old-fashioned shysters trying to feed on – and exploit – the insecurity (and wallets) of other men.
So when Seth Parker, one of my seduction instructors for the afternoon, explained that he might hit on me in a bookstore by wrapping up a magazine and bopping me on the head with it, I casually explained where I would have wanted to shove that magazine. (Guys, this is not an “approach” I’d recommend, unless you happen to be, say, Colin Farrell.)
Seth is partners with Cameron Theone, Ranko Magami, and Robert Torrey in Fidentia (“confidence” in Latin), an LA-based company that teaches nebbishy, bespectacled or simply curious men to discover their inner sex gods (www.fidentia.org). By the end of one of their three-day, $650, bimonthly workshops, a graduate should be able to walk up to a group of attractive women (known in these circles as a “cold approach”), single out the cutest one and seduce her. All three days of the workshop, in fact, end in bars and nightclubs where students can try out their new skills while their proud tutors look on from their own tables of conquests.
