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Maybe
he does have a charismatic personality. But it's also possible he's a
student of The Mystery Method (themysterymethod.com), the infamous
system of attracting and meeting women that's become a legend in the
world of PUAs (pickup artists). It's
an intensive and unusual seminar course taught in workshops in Canada
and the U.S. by an early-30s Toronto man who calls himself Mystery
(real name Erik Von Markovik) and an approach that has turned him into
an unlikely international celebrity. Now
living in Las Vegas, Mystery is a tall, colourful character who wears
flamboyant clothes and always paints his nails black -- both an
important aspect of his "method"that he calls "peacocking," which makes
sure a man "stands out" rather than "blends in." He
developed the basis of his Method during his experiences as a close-up
magician working in Canada and the U.S. stating that his interaction
with people helped him learn the complexities of human behaviour. During
this time he connected with the Internet seduction community, a
loose-knit online community of men aiming to improve their success with
women. (Visit alt.seduction.fast; fastseduction.com.) It's
a community that attracted wide media attention when The Game by Neil
Strauss was published and the seduction manual reached the New York
Times bestseller list. A movie is now in the works. Mystery
quickly became known as one of the best "seduction gurus" and was the
first to take students out in the field to clubs and bars to show them
not only how to approach women but what they were doing wrong. "The
mistake most men make," he says, in a phone interview from Cornwall,
England, where he's visiting friends, "is that they try to seduce a
woman right away. They have to realize that for women it's all about
feeling comfortable with a man first and not feeling he's pursuing her
for sex." He
says beautiful women (HBs -- hot babes) have, after all, heard every
line a thousand times before so men have to try something completely
different. (The men are AFCs -- Average Frustrated Chumps.) For
instance, Mystery teaches men about "negging," a term he invented. It
means making a negative remark or ignoring a woman ("the target") so it
disqualifies him as a potential suitor yet provokes the woman's
interest. She then has to position herself as a conquest rather than
just ignore the pickup lines. He
also points out that most women today go out in groups so he offers the
tip that in order to meet the woman he wants, he should always put a
smile on his face and introduce himself to the entire group. Better
still, he adds, is to introduce himself and his group of friends to the
group. "It's
essential," he says, "that he doesn't indicate he's after one
particular woman, even if he is. That way she feels comfortable with
him." Von
Markovik says his Method teaches nine phases that lead -- in only seven
hours, he insists (the hours can be spread over any period of time) --
to the culmination of the liaison, although he says the method takes
three-and-a-half years to really perfect. There's three states of attraction; three of comfort building and three of seduction.
"Every
love story that has ever existed has been through these phases," he
says, explaining that his methods are based on sound principles of
psychology and social dynamics. "As
women's emotional circuits are all the same and are triggered by the
same responses, I help men find those triggers of connection." Mystery's
seminars have been so successful he now has a coterie of trained
seduction gurus to teach his seminars for him but he still conducts
many himself. With
his courses now costing up to $2,500 (although the Learning Annex held
a four-hour session recently in Toronto for only $109), he has long ago
put away his magician's cloak. Now he prefers to perform the magic of getting sure-fire dates with hot women for the average Joe.
Magic indeed.
Next story: They call him Mr. Dad
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