You Can Hate The Player AND The Game. Oh, And The New Game The Player Is Also Playing.

“What takes unstoppable confidence is writing a book condemning a previous period of your life as empty and deluded, then selling the keys to such a life to the rubes still scrabbling after it. Strauss has been charging a presumably substantial sum for self-improvement guidance even while writing a book in which he confesses, ‘I’ve made a mess of everything and may never experience true happiness, love and family.’ Sure, another quick Google search suggests that Strauss has worked out some of his problems, but not before a moment of truth on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu where he has to keep ducking off into the bushes to apply Neosporin to a penis rubbed raw by ‘overuse.’ Nevertheless, Strauss has succeeded. An editor friend recently told me that one of his authors, a well-known entrepreneur, is ‘obsessed’ with Strauss and his programs. Not the pickup stuff. ‘No, no. The rest of it.’”
 — I somehow missed the whole Neil Strauss comeback until this weekend, when his press tour became nearly inescapable (much like the terrible come-ons he spawned were to a generation of young women just trying to get a drink with friends a decade ago). Anyway, I guess he has grown and changed (from even last year!) and now he has learned that wiping your dick up on every thigh that brushes by is not the true path to happiness or whatever. Hey, if I write a book about how to do something despicable right now will you guys also buy the sequel in ten years where I come to understand that true happiness lies in the opposite of whatever the fuck I told you to do just now? Because that sounds like the kind of racket I could really enjoy.