Project 365 (35/365): Mystery

.:35/365: Mystery:.

You may scoff, but he’s had more tail than Naruto. And if you get that joke, you should really rethink your life.

And now, we enter the realm of Pickup Artists. I’ll probably talk about them at some other point this month, but it’s safe to say that Mystery is one of the first people who’d come to mind whenever the three letters P, U, and A are put together.

As the alter-ego of Erik Von Markovik, Mystery is a persona that has captured the fancy and interest of a lot of attractive women in bars and clubs, thanks to a very systematic method developed over the years by Mystery with the help of his wingman, Neil Strauss. The “secrets” of this system are revealed to a large extent in the book entitled “The Game,” often hailed as a bible by most pickup artists.

What makes Mystery very interesting is he is actually a magician, and if you exclude the recent influx of “cool” street magicians like David Blaine or Criss Angel, magic is hardly regarded as “cool” by people in general. If anything, most people find magicians very dorky, or downright weird. Mystery didn’t exactly try to become the next Blaine or Angel when he did what he did. In fact, he used these perceptions to his advantage because it doesn’t really matter what people might think of him, the point was, they were guaranteed to think about him.

I realize I’m merely painting in broad strokes as I talk about Mystery, but his achievements cannot be denied, and his techniques as a mentalist and as a magician have certainly allowed him to translate his skill into success with seducing women who feel inexplicably attracted to a guy they barely know. It seems everything falls into place for them, but for Mystery, this is all according to plan, in fact.

Purists may not approve of Mystery and his usage of magic and mentalism as a tool to get closer to women, but few can deny that it is effective. If someone like Jay Sankey can do it, I don’t see why anyone else with ample skill and charisma can’t. Mystery realized this, and has made a name for himself because of it.