VH1’s hit reality show, ‘The Pickup Artist,’ has garnered attention worldwide, earning both a rabid following of fans and an equally large amount of critics. ‘The Pickup Artist’ is a reality game show in which 8 male contestants compete in the arena of picking up women, with one of them to be named the ‘Master Pickup Artist’ in the end. The eight men were chosen from among thousands who applied. All of them claim to be unlucky in love for one reason or another.
Taking them through their paces is the master of ceremonies, the original pickup artist himself, Erik von Markovic, aka Mystery. Mystery teaches the men various techniques throughout the show, and then gives them challenges such as meeting a woman at a certain spot (say, a bridge) during the day or picking up a stripper (which Mystery names as the ultimate challenge.) So just what is it about Mystery that makes him so intriguing, so admired and hated? What makes him good at what he does? Mystery claims that the methods that he uses can be learned and successfully used by any man who wants to meet, and ultimately sleep with women of his choosing. He says that he spent his younger years quite shy, and had difficulty starting conversations with people he didn’t know, particularly women. One thing that helped him to overcome his shyness was magic. Yes, he learned to do magic tricks in order to get girls’ attention. This, he says, was the turning point in his life, for he discovered somewhere along the way that he could continue to command attention without the magic. It was the words and his personality that people were enjoying and listening to.
Mystery is credited with inventing modern pickup and seduction. At the very least, he has seriously upped the game. He first became famous when he was featured in Neil Strauss’ bestselling book “The Game”. In the book, author Strauss (soon to be nicknamed “Style”) went from a total failure with women, to a pickup expert, under the tutelage of Mystery. Prior to the book, Mystery was an underground sensation, booked for private lessons all over the country. Since that time, he has gone on to run several websites, and to turn his Mystery Method into a huge business, giving live pickup coaching and seminars. He recently formed a company called the Venusian Arts and is working on several books and DVD’s. Mystery describes his method for picking up women as, “A simple step-by-step system that teaches you how to meet, attract, and seduce or date gorgeously hot, beautiful women…” He claims that the method is based on female psychology, and as such, that it works independent of the man’s attractiveness and social or economic standing. His lessons begin in the classroom, where he explains the basics and then moves on to live situations, such as bars or restaurants, where he coaches the men on talking to women.