A review by unionmack
The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss

4.0

The pickup artist subculture is arguably the most inadvertently funny cadre of people I can bring to mind. If you read this book and "practice any of its teachings," you are either a sociopath or, more likely, a maladjusted, misogynist nerd. The stories here are just utterly ridiculous and I straddle the line between believing none of them or all of them are true—either option is hilarious to me. Neil Strauss actually does do a decent job of revealing the humanity of these people and I found that pretty impressive. It's pretty clear by the end of the book that he's in on the joke now, that he realizes just how absurd and dehumanizing this sort of "lifestyle" is. Sometimes, you just need to read something that feels like the worst reality TV imaginable and, for the last week or so, this delivered plenty of entertainment. Do yourself a favor if you, like me, are addicted to cringeworthy and accidental humor and either read this or watch the VH1 offshoot somewhere online.