John Jones: The Game

Now I don’t want to come across all ‘boasty’ right off the bat, but I read a fair few books. Not even just to impress girls, staring blankly at a page while thinking about the plot of last night’s Gossip Girl either, I read the words and everything. Once I even read a whole chapter of Harry Potter without taking a break. Seriously it happened.

Yet still, even with this neck-snappingly massive brain of mine, I can’t quite get my head around the last book I read, ‘The Game’. The concept is fairly simple, journalist Neil Strauss investigates the world of ‘pick-up artists’, offering their trade secrets to readers along the way. He teaches readers how to engage with women and eventually, through body language and not-so-subtle psychological hints, how to secure dates with female strangers.

All pretty straightforward so far, but here’s where the problems start for readers who aren’t morally bankrupt. Strauss guides readers through the whole ‘pick-up’ side of things with more enthusiasm than a 14-year-old boy on an FHM internship, but tends to become a bit mute regarding the prospect of the following relationship. The reason is, of course, that his readers aren’t looking to call women to discuss their 10 favourite things about Robert Pattinson: they’re looking for numbers in the sole hope of bumping uglies before running as fast as their pervy legs will carry them.

For the record, I’ve not slipped on my dog collar here based just on the idea of wanting a one night stand: many men, and women, stay single for this very purpose, shunning commitment with every fibre of their being. The real worrying thing is the culture that has developed around the book. Men don’t go looking for women, they go “sarging”, they write-up “FR’s” (field reports) for other “PUA’s” (pick-up artists) to ensure that they don’t become “AFC’s” (Average Frustrated Chumps). Even Strauss himself isn’t a writer; he’s a “Life Hacker”.

Petty? Perhaps. But with 82,000 readers in the first four months of sales and a long-term place as a New York Times best-seller, the book definitely deserves the attention of a single man. This week I have taken up the book’s ideas and chosen to start my adventures at the (very) shallow end of the dating pool.

I decided it would only be fair to try the techniques out in a local establishment, and for those who aren’t regular tasters of the Merton nightlife, the borough is fairly limited when it comes to dance venues. For publicity reasons I probably shouldn’t name the place I eventually chose to visit, so for the sake of this article let’s just call it ‘Bo Na Na’. The club is marketed as an Eastern paradise, and it works, to an extent. Inside it looks like Aladdin’s ‘cave of wonders’, only if instead of the magic carpet you’ve got an epilepsy-inducing dancefloor, and instead of the lamp you’ve got a £12 cocktail that tastes suspiciously like Tropicana. Oh and instead of Jafar waiting outside there’s a drunk girl, sprawled on the concrete like a Starfish, crying into the kebab that she’s just dropped.

The book is intended as a step-by-step guide to picking up women, ventured in real life one page at a time. My first mistake of the evening was probably deciding to take a giant leap instead, picking up a few key points and trying them out. The book tells readers to try ignoring the women/men that you’re interested in, first spending time talking to their friends instead. It promotes the idea of subversive compliments and the idea of simple physical contact (lightly touching the person’s arm etc.) to engage a connection. Annoyingly, all these techniques seemed to be working, at least at first. My second mistake of the evening, as it turns out, was spending too much time with my friends Jack (Daniels) and Sam (Buca) instead of trying out the book’s ideas.

I can only offer one word of warning to those people who genuinely want to spend their evenings chasing after random women: either embrace sobriety and make a good impression or abandon the idea completely. After a drink or seven, the nuances between subversive compliment and all-out insult tend to become a little bit harder to distinguish and you end up looking about as smooth as a lumberjack’s armpit. Meeting prospective partners with alcohol in your system is always a bad idea: either you say something ridiculous and ruin any chance of earning their respect or you blink in your drunken haze and end up peering down to see someone who looks like the Churchill dog chewing on your bottom lip like it’s a squeeze toy.

Overall, I found out that the world’s ‘pick-up artists’ have clearly done their research. Even based on the early part of one night’s experience, it was pretty clear that these subtle tips are helpful when trying to meet female strangers in bars and clubs. The problem is, however, that the relationship is completely contrived. As a man you’re not genuinely interested in what the “target” is saying, but instead just thinking about the next move you’ll make. Also, even if (God forbid) the second and third date does eventually happen and all goes successfully, what will you tell your children? “Well, I met your mummy after I got Life Hacked and after two months of trying to hypnotise her, here we are – Happily Ever After”.

Both ‘The Game’ and its sequel ‘The Rules Of The Game’ are interesting reads, and I would advise both men and women to give it a quick look, even if just to find out the lengths that some people will go to in order to engage with the opposite sex. Personally, I’m after something with a little more sincerity when forming a relationship. Something natural. Something not at all contrived, forced or awkward like, oh I don’t know, blind dating?

Next week: Blind Dating!

John Jones: I Bloody Love Clubs...Obviously.

Clubs. I bloody love clubs...obviously. I love the chunky bouncer who gets to third base with you before you’ve even entered the building. I love paying a crisp 10 pound note to get in and then nigh-on five pounds for a pint of Fosters-flavoured water. I love getting evil looks from the man in the toilets for washing my own hands. I love being guilted into putting my hands up for Detroit and I love being hugged by sweat-drenched strangers...obviously.

Clubs can be a surreal experience at the best of times. Looking around to see six brutish men circled around a girl with their mouths on the floor and their hands locked and loaded for a grade-A fumble, it often feels like a scene from Attenborough: Human Mating Rituals. Heck, I won’t lie, I still find myself looking around the back of the plastic plants, half expecting to see the silver-tongued narrator on all fours, excitedly whispering about how lucky we are to finally witness the homo sapiens in its natural habitat. Without wanting to be seen boasting about my opposable thumbs here, let’s just say the nightclub scene isn’t really for me.

Now I know that opinion may not sit too well with everybody: some people love clubs, I get it. I still have nightmares about that one group of girls who scream like banshees as their favourite song comes on...oh you know the one, that song with that sexy man singer and the electronic drums and the synth bridge and that bit where the rapper talks about sex.

But the main problem is that these places don’t want people to converse. As a club owner you want to maximise your profits – keeping the dance floor full and the bar busy. Give your punters a quiet atmosphere and they won’t be pouring expensive shots down their throats but instead they’ll sit talking about retro cartoons and Russian literature - then you’d really be in trouble, what with no profits and a club full of fictional morons. Club owners keep the music loud so that their clients will abandon the idea of communication and just resort to drinking away the awkward bass-filled silences. So you’ve not paid the 10 pounds entry for the conversation or the atmosphere, and here’s where the problem begins for a single man. It’s hard to even enter a club environment without being given the ‘he’s only here for one thing’ evil eye. Girls love dancing, for the most part: it doesn’t take a genius to notice that it’s not Frank and Terry buying the Glee boxsets. Men, on the other hand, tend to spend their time on the dancefloor awkwardly pushing their chests out and lurching their feet up and down like a drunken Pinocchio.

So why do men go to clubs at all?

I normally find myself at this stumbling block of a question at around 12am on a Saturday night. Now I’m well aware of the answer that screams its way through the heads of female readers, and let me be the first to say that it’s not to meet a girl: it’s said that 80 per cent of a person’s opinion of you is made in the first seven seconds of meeting, and there’s no way I’m looking to find a girlfriend whose first glimpse of me was a misty-eyed rendition of ‘It’s My Life’ complete with back-to-back guitar solo.

It’s not the music, the conversation or even the girls that lure me into the local nightlife. Truth is, it’s peer pressure. Find me a man that loves clubs and I’ll find you a liar. Week in, week out, men are being bullied into clubs by other men, who are being bullied by other men, who are, in all likelihood, being bullied by the first man in a circle of drunken confusion.

So, please do your borough a favour. The next time you see a single man in a club with two left feet and a penchant for tequila, don’t judge him as a misogynist with his cross-hairs ready to fire. Take pity on the man: have a conversation outside, buy him a kebab perhaps, but if you want to keep your toenails in place it’s probably best not to ask him to dance.

Next week: I’ll be jumping straight into the world of the club nightlife with the help of Neill Strauss’ sleazers Bible, ‘The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists’.