Random Reader Reaction

I was by the bar the other night at Tenjune when I overhead two, back-officey, young Indian guys talking. Perhaps hoping to capitalize on their first time inside a hip club, they chatted strategically, devising about things called “2-sets” and “openers.” At first, I assumed they were talking about whatever dudes like that talk about: database theory, trading systems, and suicide. But then they came to a resolution and walked up to two girls and said something or another. They got shot down, returned to the bar, and, seemingly unphased, decided they’d keep “plowing” together and that soon, they’d fully grasp the “Mystery Method.” The guys then did 4 shots each, began touching each other’s hair and faces while practicing “kino escalation,” and I came to understand that the “Mystery Method” must be something created to facilitate homosexuality. I grew overwhelmingly uncomfortable at the notion of these two dudes parsing through my work emails and promptly had them removed.

Since then, I’ve heard a lot more about The Mystery Method and its creator, a guy named Mystery, so I figured I would conduct a bit of diligence on the subject. Apparently, it’s a methodology for picking up women, and it’s meant to be quite successful. I probed slightly deeper and found a system dedicated to attracting, building comfort with, and seducing girls. The underlying concept is that women are attracted to those who can help them in their need to both Survive and Reproduce, and men can capitalize on this by learning to send out signals of social value, disinterest, and arrogance.

Interesting—essentially, this man Mystery has created a framework to try to make all men more Banker.

It’s no “mystery” that working in finance is the most successful way to pick up chicks–it’s intuitive. I speculate that Mystery originally worked in something like Global Industrials at UBS, where he met guys from other Banks and observed the success and power of The Banker Method. He then left, crippled the game by removing its Wall Street essence, and repackaged it for the average idiot as The Mystery Method. Mystery’s tactics are meant to help people front the very qualities Bankers exude naturally, but unlike normal derivatives, these devices actually lack the leverage of the originals.

Let’s inspect what was lost when going from The Banker Method to The Mystery Method more closely.

Openers

The Mystery Method endorses several different kinds of openers, ranging from functional, “What time is it?” to opinion, “Is kissing cheating?” and direct, “I think you’re cute.” The methods have increasing risk/reward profiles and each requires a different amount of transition to get to “normal conversation.”

In all his material, I was unable to find the only opener I’ve ever had to use: “Waddup bitch, I work in Finnance.” The risk is zero, and transition to “normal conversation” is instantaneous, where the phrase “normal conversation” refers to “sex.” Direct, but highly functional. All of Mystery’s canned material doesn’t even come close to capturing the spirit of this single sentence.

Demonstrating Higher Value

Demonstrating social value, or “applying a multiple,” is a big part of The Mystery Method but built-in to The Banker Method. While others need to go to extraordinary lengths to inflate their social value and prove that they are desirable, this is inherently conveyed with the very word “Banker.” Mystery instructs his students to tell stories that involve acts of chivalry, lavish parties, and exotic dancers, but we, luckily, don’t have to do that—our reputation precedes us.

IOI’s

Driving the conversation, leaning in, and touching are all Indicators of Interest from a girl. According to Mystery, upon seeing these, a guy should kiss the girl or otherwise escalate the situation.

Girls tend to be slightly less coy and a bit more retarded about their IOI’s with Bankers. Just the other night, I was dancing with a girl when she pulled me close by my tie, nibbled my neck, and whispered: “Is your fund short, or long?”

The concept of Private Equity apparently didn’t quite click for her, but I played along anyway and told her we were value-based but long-term and invested in a wide range of industries. The financial whiz giggled, and we went home, where my fund promptly transformed into a growth fund, and ultimately, an event-driven one.

Neuro-Linguistic Processing (NLP)

Pick-Up Artists use subtleties in human perception and cognizance to manipulate girls. For example, while telling a story, they might bring up situations where a bed is casually involved, mispronounce words to evoke emotion, or use the phrase “naked truth,” to plant subtle seeds of sexual thought in their target’s brain.

NLP comes a bit more naturally to Bankers. For example, a girl once asked me if I knew her friend who worked sales at JP Morgan. Without thinking, I responded: “JP Morgan? I would never work there, that’s b.low me.”

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Mystery has built numerous other concepts around Banker behavior, including The Neg, which is intended to briefly disqualify one as a suitor, and Peacocking, which consists of wearing ostentatious and conversation-inducing clothing and accessories. I’ve told girls that they’re too slutty to bring to a work function and worn a deal toy around my neck when going out, but I’ve never classified my actions within such a lame vocabulary. Then again, I’ve never had to.

Other Pick-Up Artists have disparaged The Banker Method, claiming that girls prefer a “mountain climber who plays the electric guitar” and those who “know how to treat them” over guys from Goldman Sachs. What Banker-envy! I treat a bitch like an IRR of 80%–grip it and flip it.

There may be some additional debate over whether The Banker Method is really applicable and better than The Mystery Method given the present market. Fuck that and fuck those quant dudes. Hot chicks don’t watch CNBC (unless it’s to get aroused), so they have no idea what the hell is going on. Guys that work in finance can and will always be able to turn on every type of girl out there except maybe Banker Chicks, who, besides being out of scope, don’t require much more than a tap on the shoulder to get into bed.

Leveraging his stolen pick-up tactics, Mystery has recently managed to land himself a reality show on VH1, where he takes a set of losers and tries to turn them into Master Pick-Up Artists, teaching them his method and eliminating the ones that fail along the way. I can’t help but imagine what this show would be like if the characters were all Bankers practicing The Banker Method. Instead of Pradeep, an Indian nerd on the show the guys at Tenjune must have been emulating, we’d have a young Dinakar Singh, and the openers would change from “Do you floss before or after you brush?” to “Can I break you off a slice of my Bonus?” The field tests would degenerate into full-out orgies, and Mystery and his other instructors would be rendered worthless, now taking lessons from the Bankers and trying not to get eliminated themselves.

I suppose a program like that would be interesting for a few minutes but, in the long run, might not do too well. Reality TV shows are successful when they take ordinary people and put them in extraordinary situations, not the other way around. The Banker Method bringing girls to their knees in a club might not make for the greatest reality TV because…it’s reality.