The Mystery Method

Definition

The Mystery Method is the best-known structured seduction system to come out of the pick-up-artist community. In the model, a pickup artist approaches a group of strangers — a "set" — and spreads attention across the whole group rather than the chosen person until attraction has been established. ^[2] This site describes what the method is and how critics frame it; it does not reproduce the routines or scripts themselves.

Where it comes from

The method is named for its creator, Erik von Markovik, a Canadian pickup artist more popularly known by his stage name Mystery. ^[1] The character Mystery was created in the late 1990s, and von Markovik is known for the Mystery Method and VH1's The Pickup Artist, the 2007 reality show he fronted; his books include The Mystery Method (2006) and The Venusian Arts Handbook (2005). ^[1] The system was documented from the inside by Neil Strauss in The Game, the 2005 bestseller that made Mystery a public figure.

In the manosphere

The Mystery Method is the seed of much of the vocabulary in this glossary — sarging, the opener, peacocking, the wingman and negging all belong to its world of pickup artistry. What makes it more than a period curiosity is the underlying frame: courtship reduced to a scripted, staged procedure. After three days at a company seminar, journalist Gene Weingarten described the product as a "step by step tutorial for men in how to pick up women, make them comfortable in your presence, and bed them, ideally within seven hours of your first meeting", and worried about its ethics. ^[2] Even Strauss, its most famous chronicler, has conceded that "all of these routines and manipulations are just a way for a guy to get his foot in the door". ^[2] Read approvingly, that framing treats a person as a set to be worked rather than someone to meet.